Beowulf

The bane of English majors for 1,300 years makes it back to the big screen, now with 75 percent more hostility toward Christianity! As presented by director Robert Zemeckis, it’s an epic poem for the ages, a tale of heroism and hubris and … uh … Angelina Jolie’s breasts, as much justification for IMAX 3-D as cinema ever will require. Now, we know how attached you were to the Seamus Heaney translation, but surely you’ll find something to like in this rather revisionist one, scripted by comic-book badass Neil Gaiman and Quentin Tarantino collaborator Roger Avary. Though unfairly slenderized by all that weirdly deadening motion-capture animation, Ray Winstone as the bodacious Beowulf is very good, sort of a thinking person’s Russell Crowe. Anthony Hopkins acts appropriately regal as King Hrothgar; John Malkovich as the unctuous Unferth is too easy, but Crispin Glover as the grotesque Grendel is inspired.